Not dead but asleep

Before Spring Grove, I was aware that there were 19th and early 20th century monuments for deceased children that included a small representation of a sleeping child on top of them, but they aren’t popular in the Cleveland cemeteries I’ve visited so far. In Spring Grove they are absolutely everywhere – and they give me the willies.

I don’t know why I find them so unnerving – if it’s the fact that most of them are made out of a softer stone that does not weather that well and are therefore mere shadows of the original carvings. I know that I find very eroded angels and other standing statues much less aesthetically pleasing than those with crisper, fresher lines.

I realize that the artistic representation of the children is intended to convey sleeping, and it is not my way of coping with death to imagine that individuals have just drifted into peaceful sleep.